The Anatomy of Melancholy

What greater captivity or slavery can there be, as Cicero demands, than being in love? “Is a man free when a woman rules him, lays down laws for him, commands and forbids whatever she pleases? When he dares refuse nothing she demands? She asks: he gives. She calls: he comes. She threatens: he fears.” “I consider this man a most worthless slave”—in other words, an absolute drudge.

And, as he continues: “Is this no small slavery for a lover: every hour combing his hair, stiffening his beard, perfuming his hair, washing his face with scented waters, applying cosmetics and curls, and never going out unless smartly crowned, adorned and dressed?”

Yet these are trifles by comparison: going to the barber, baths, theatres and so forth. He must attend her wherever she goes, run through the streets past her doors and windows to see her, seize every opportunity, invent pointless errands, wear disguises and assumed identities—as many forms as Jupiter himself ever took. He must come to her house every day, as he certainly will if truly in love, offer his services and follow her from room to room, as Lucretia’s suitors did. He cannot restrain himself: he must do it. He must and will be wherever she is, sit beside her and talk to her continually.

“If I merely happened to drop my glove,” as that Lucretia of Aretino’s boasts, “one of my suitors—indeed, two or three at once—was ready to stoop, pick it up, kiss it and return it to me with a deep bow. If I wished to walk, another was ready to support my arm. A third would provide fruit: pears, plums, cherries, or anything I wanted to eat or drink.”

He does all this and much more in her presence. When he comes home, like Troilus thinking of his Cressida, his sole occupation is to rehearse his actions, words and gestures: the reception he received, how kindly she treated him in a certain place, how she smiled and favoured him, and how infinitely it pleased him. Then he bursts out: “O sweet Areusa! O my dearest Antiphila! O most divine looks! O lovely graces!” At once he makes an epigram or a sonnet to five or seven tunes in her praise. Or else he broods over how she rejected his service, refused him a kiss, humiliated him and so forth; and this torments him just as powerfully. These are his occupations between comb and mirror: madrigals, elegies and the like. Such are his thoughts until he sees her again.

But all this is easy and mild, the smallest part of his toil and bondage. No hunter will take such pains for his game, no bird-catcher for his sport, no soldier to sack a city, as he will for his mistress’s favour.

I myself will come as your companion; neither rugged Rocks nor the boar with its fearsome slanting tusk will deter me.

So says Phaedra to Hippolytus. No danger will frighten him. For if the poets’ fiction is true, Love is the son of Mars and Venus: as he inherits delights, pleasures and graces from his mother, so he inherits hardiness, courage and boldness from his father. And Bernard’s saying is true: “Nothing is gentler than love, nothing more violent”—nothing so tempestuous, nothing so tender as love.